2018 goals I didn’t know I had until now

I’m not usually one for resolutions or general yearly goals. The sudden unnecessary need to pluck new aims from the air of January never quite hit me as hard as I’d hoped. I set resolutions – of course I did – but oh they were just made up for the sake of it. I’m sure I had an entire post of bookish resolutions in some form or another from last year, but while I would usually look back on that kind of thing, I’ve decided to abandon it this time. I know full well that whatever resolutions I made at that point were just made for the sake of it. I know that while they might have been interesting to me a year ago, I changed midway through the year and so those goals are probably irrelevant now.

So I started 2018 with not specific goals in mind. I’ll just aim to survive, thank you very much. Until I realised…well, I do have things I’m aiming for, they’re just vast and have been worked on for awhile already, and 2018 will simply serve to solidify them in a way. Still, now they’re set in stone on the walls of my mind, so here we are.

I will preface this by saying that these goals are by no means the most mind-blowing of schemes. They are by no means unheard of or even hold the slightest inkling of being uncommon, however each one does have its own l’il story behind it.

· Expand on my love for history ·

Will people roll their eyes once more when they hear me say I love history? Probably, but it’s true. Does that mean I’m any good at it? Eh, no. I’m actually rubbish with facts; I couldn’t tell you the names and dates of even the most well known events in all likelihood. But it doesn’t ruin my love for the stories (only my telling of them, *sigh*). I don’t think my fascination for history will ever dissipate. Though while I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember, I feel like I haven’t gotten that far. Education brought me many rounds of studying the world wars and not much more than that besides, so it’s time for me to search for stories myself – particularly through the books I buy and consume. So many of the books I’ve been interested in over the past few months have either been entirely history based, or at least heavily influenced by a historical setting, and so when I finally let myself buy a stack of books for the new year they pretty much all ended up being history related, covering a range of different countries and time periods. I genuinely feel a bubble of excitement every time I think of these books – thinking about where they will sit on my shelves, filming videos featuring them, taking photos of them, and of course reading them – and that’s how I know this is definitely something I want to keep up with throughout the year.

There will be a huge collective book haul going up on my channel soon which will feature the books I mentioned, so keep an eye out for that if you’re interested!

· Explore a little more & create a journal ·

“Travel more” is one huge cliché of a resolution, but for once it actually holds a place on my own list. Still, I’m skeptical about how well I’ll be able to reach this goal, but of all the years I’ve held so far, this one seems to be the most likely for it. I’ve barely travelled – that much I’ll say right now. I’ve never left the UK, and even within the UK I can’t say I’ve discovered much. It was just never a thing we did when I was younger, and now my anxiety makes any unfamiliar travel hard. Over the new year though, I took a trip to Edinburgh, which honestly felt like the biggest accomplishment simply because I managed the 4 hour train rides alone. And – surprisingly – in complete ease.

So now it’s opened the floodgates. I’ve seen it’s possible for me to travel without any major disasters happening, and so the urge to do so again has very much made its place in my mind. I’d adore more than anything to discover more of Scotland, or even return to Edinburgh, and there are so many places within the rest of the UK that I’m eager to look further into and plan possible trips. What’s more, I just received my first passport and am in the midsts of planning a family holiday, so if all goes accordingly…I will actually cross the sea for the first time. Imagine that.

I’ve also recently purchased another journal to use as a sort of scrapbook for the photographs I take at each place I visit. I love bullet journaling so much, but it’ll be nice to have a place to keep photographs and design more aesthetic (rather than functional ones like my bullet journal) spreads.

· Make my bookshelves my own ·

I’ve been wanting to do an updated bookshelf tour for months now. Why haven’t I? Because I don’t feel like my bookshelves are entirely my own. My reading taste has changed dramatically over the last half-year or so, and even though I’ve already unhauled a huge amount of books, I don’t feel like my bookshelves represent my reading taste enough yet. They’re getting there, slowly but surely. But it’s definitely something I’m still working on. At first I had a problem with unhauling books, basically hoarding them because I couldn’t bare the thought of my precious bookshelves looking empty. But I started a system where for every book I buy, I take one away to be unhauled, effectively replacing one book I don’t want for one I do. This way, my TBR list doesn’t grow, my bookshelves don’t look forlorn, and I can give books to a donation point to help raise money for charity.

So my plan is to revive this method. I feel like I forgot about it for awhile towards the end of 2017, but as mentioned above, I just bought a whole load of new books and so this would be the perfect time to replace the ones I’m not so interested in anymore, especially now that I have a better idea of what my reading taste is again. I’m excited by the idea of finally having bookshelves that represent me as a person, shelves that when people look at them, they’ll be able to tell exactly where my interests lie. That’s what I’m aiming for.

· Slaying that literature degree ·

It doesn’t take much explaining: I want to do well at uni. Don’t most people? While I’ve given uni my everything so far, I want to continue doing so. *Cue the empowering work scene with badass music as I slay my way through more words than ever*

I’ll be throwing everything I’ve got at my uni work. I’ll be channeling my inner Hermione Granger and maybe – just maybe – I’ll be able to absolutely slay my first year of uni and go into the next in a similar way. The amount of people I follow on YouTube and social media that inspire me every day to be productive and throw my all into my interests (both uni and personal) is incredible, and I’m hoping that even when I’m tired, stressed, or even overwhelmed with it all…I’ll be reminded that it’s possible. Especially with added coffee.

Whether I achieve these things or not is left to be seen. But with a whole lot of days ahead and not a whole lot of plans yet to fill them, I’m hopeful that at least something will happen. The prospect of 2018 is daunting, honestly, with the lack of plans giving me nothing set to aim for with each month. Though I’ll keep reminding myself that it’s just 365 days for potential plans. 365 days where things could happen, and the simple fact that nothing is planned yet only means I get to do the fun planning part sometime soon. As for now…I’ll just keep tiptoeing on by.

I’d say that my general resolutions are all very similar to yours – especially relating to travel and slaying that literature degree! I’m visiting Edinburgh in July with a friend which I’m so excited about, and I’m hoping more exciting opportunities are around the corner. Good luck with all of your goals this year!

Oh, I actually feel exactly the same about history! But at the same time, I’m a mess when it comes to facts and actual knowledge. I’ve started just taking notes, writing down interesting stuff I stumble upon – from ancient history, mentions in books I read, or news – and researching those while drinking my coffee. It’s surprisingly a lot of fun and I love how writing everything down leaves me with more concrete knowledge AND inspiration for my own work. Maybe you’ll have some space for that in your new journal? 🙂

I totally get what you mean about your bookshelves not feeling like your own! Having finally got all my books into the same place, I realised there were so many books I had that I didn’t want to read and that I purely bought because I thought I should read them, or I hung onto them because they were gifts. Just today I unhauled a chunk of these books and gave them to Oxfam but it’s still an ongoing process because I feel like there are still books I have that I’m not necessarily interested in them because I want to read them but because there was so much hype surrounding them. Good luck with university, I’m sure you’re absolutely smashing it 🙂

Thank you! ❤ I keep getting rid of books in "rounds" – I know the first few times I unhauled books, I still hung on to a lot that I told myself I would read, but now I look back on and know I won't (so they can now go in my latest unhaul). Just a process of elimination really ahaha 😆